Oct 16, 2014

Suggested User

Hi, in all of sudden I was struck by an urge to share my personal stories again here..so I'm starting with (sadly) one of the biggest thing that occurred in my life: featured as Suggested User in Instagram. However, this post isn't really intended to be read so you may not keep going. I'm actually pretty embarrassed with my words. But why did I write this post? Because, yeah..
This happened nearly three months ago, when I woke up in one normal morning and noticed a dramatical change in my Followers number and checked my Direct Message; Instagram congratulated me for being listed as Suggested User for several weeks. Some of my friends and my sister were pretty cruel for not taking it as a big deal. I really didn't mean to dramatize things, but Instagram is currently one of the biggest social networking app in the world with millions of users... and out of these millions, I was chosen! I was more than thrilled and incredibly proud of myself. It was very exciting too to check how my Followers grew so fast in just one minute and how one single photo that I post gained so many Likes.
But I had a problem.
Apparently, I was not really lucky. I received new Instagram users as my followers. And those users, were actually pretty....uneducated? I didn't know what happened, but they constantly spammed on my account! Heavily and massively spammed. Hundreds of Direct Messages were sent to my inbox for weeks and when I finally was brave enough to check them out, I found creepy selfies, creepy selcas, and creepy cartoons in each message. I blocked the senders entirely. What annoyed me most was definitely "please follow me back" comments. They are EVERYWHERE. I have been greatly sick of people who keep begging for a follow-back since Twitter...and now these people are planted in my account. Thousands of them. And whenever I posted a portrait of myself, disturbing comments from male users were posted behind it as well. I'm not a good person and maybe God was punishing me. Oh and I have to inform you that I'm a little bit mentally disturbed when it comes to human-beings who don't understand the true meaning of using social media and unable to appreciate the beauty of sharing visual diary on Internet, so please excuse me.
Four weeks later, I decided to e-mail Instagram regarding Suggested User removal because I couldn't handle it anymore. I got removed a week later (I was disappointed with the slow progress because I gained around one thousand useless spammers in that one week).
Unfortunately, I'm not completely getting rid of them because it's still linked. Friends of friends of spammers still come to my account to spam. I still receive 4 or 5 Direct Messages from creepy strangers in a month. I have been seriously thinking of using IGExorcist to cull them, but I have to do it manually to prevent culling my friends, which means I have to filter 17,000 users one by one........
I promise to post something way more positive next time. Until then.

Oh my God. Included in Suggested Users is like a double-edge sword after all. So scary. I'm glad that you share this, because your story made me realize about the negative side of being a popular IGers. So, thank you. =D

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Hi, it's Jess.
This blog is mostly about my mundane life, artworks and things that inspire me. I'm currently working on a revival of the way I see things in this world. By the way, I would appreciate it if you don't look through my old posts because they are downright embarrassing.
Thank you so much for visiting.